Prior probability that a super-intelligent, reclusive, crypto-guy that values anonymity would use his given name as his pseudonym: very very low.

Subsequent evidence to believe Dorian is Satoshi: He's an apparently intelligent guy that knows how to program + a quote wherein he appears to admit that he was once involved with Bitcoin, but he later claimed was misinterpreted and out of context.

This has not been my experience with trying to do freelance programming on elance. I've applied for about 20 projects on there over the past few months, all of which I was very qualified for and gave evidence that I was qualified for (by linking to past projects of mine). I interviewed for one, which went well, but they went for a much cheaper programmer from India (I don't blame them; he looks like he does a good job). Most just don't respond.

I may be charging a bit too much, especially since I have no elance reputation, but on a lot of the projects I didn't even cite a price, and instead asked reasonable questions about the project and stated I needed those answers before I could offer a cost estimate. Almost nobody even replied. So I don't think cost is the only issue.

Maybe odesk is different, but I doubt it.

My impression from what other freelancers have said is that you need to do lots of networking to find good clients, and that most good freelance software development projects are never posted to job boards or elance or anything like that, they're handled by referrals. (I haven't actually successfully done this approach yet either though, so I can't personally vouch for it)

I had a similar experience with elance. I applied to a bunch of jobs and only got a reply back from one. That job ended up being not worth the time I ended up spending.

However, Uvocorp (uvocorp.com) is another freelancing site I use, and my experience there has been much better. You have to pass a pretty easy writing test to be able to work at all. Once you pass, though, you can browse all the job offers, and you are assigned the job as soon as you hit 'apply'.

I'm very selective about what jobs I choose, in order to make them worth my time and to make sure I that can do a good job. Just read the job description carefully, so you know what you're signing up for. By being very selective, I've managed to keep the pay above $20 to $30 per hour.

I'm competing somewhat with writers from India or elsewhere that are willing to work for less than me, but I get a premium by being a native speaker of American English and having good ratings. I've been able to negotiate the price at times because I've been specifically requested by repeat customers.

There have been a couple of disputes, and the administrators have been reasonable.

Disclaimers:
- The payment / time varies quite a bit from job to job, so be careful what you sign up for
- It involves doing homework for college kids, in case you have moral issues with that
- During the busy college season they will assign you jobs without asking you. You can still decline them without penalty.

This is very misleading. Most of the discomfort would be from the hard table against the back of your hand, and this would be because of local pressure on specific points.

Good point, but it feels about as uncomfortable if you use a padding over the table that eliminates the stress concentrations at your bones and knuckles. Especially if you double the dumbbell weight and recognize that it's only a pressure increase of 10%.

Your thought experiment with the dumbbell is an incorrect way of thinking about ambient pressure. Ambient pressure pushes against an object from every direction. It does not work to deform or break, only compress from all sides.

Picture this: You have a hand-sized water balloon on a table. You place the two dumbbells on it; it breaks. You have another water balloon. You take this one, tie it to a dumbbell, and drop it into deep water. Do you expect it to break when descends to 3 feet (i.e. 10% increase in pressure)?

I would not expect it to break at all. When water and other non-gases are put under pressure, the bonds and repulsive forces within push back.

Don't quote me on this part, but I would guess that to break a bone with just ambient pressure, you'd have to raise the pressure to about the compressive strength of the bone, around 100 megapascals. For reference, standard atmospheric pressure is around 100 kilopascals.

This is very misleading. Most of the discomfort would be from the hard table against the back of your hand, and this would be because of local pressure on specific points.

Pressure causes problems when there's a big change in a relatively short time. Ears, for example, have a hard time with this, but you can equalize them by closing your nose and mouth and trying to blow out. Before I knew about this trick, I could never dive to the bottom of the pool. Now, no problem.

A more realistic example would be to bury your hand in a foot or two of fine sand. Does that sound uncomfortable?

In the sand example, it's also important that the pressure is acting from all sides (top, bottom, left, right) so there's no force acting to deform your hand.

We can handle a relatively large range of pressures, and there are other problems before you start causing mechanical damage from the actual pressure (lack of oxygen at low pressure, dissolved gas at high pressure).

Note: Potassium supplements can be next-to-impossible to find. Seriously, I've tried. In three different states. The internet is your friend.

Also note: Potassium is fat-soluble (which means, among other things, your body does a -terrible- job of regulating its intake, unlike most other vitamins which will pass through your digestive system unabsorbed if you already have sufficient levels), and dangerous to overdose on. There are treatments if it's caught - essentially, rat poison - but they're not particularly pleasant. Be very careful with the stuff.

The advice should be to go somewhere where they can actually physically examine him, there's a host of hands-on physical tests that would point the way.

Barring that, he is missing a host of crucial information, such as family history, connection of affected joints to sports done at the time, what kind of pain, triggers for the pain, the list goes on.

That he doesn't provide his health care provider's opinion makes me wonder if he even sought professional medical attention. If so, why withhold it and make it even more of a guessing game? If not, I mean, really? (It'd be hard to help someone who - if my suspicion proved correct - chooses such an irrational way of solving a problem that he attributes "feeling the worst he ever felt in his life" to.) OP, if you're reading this, what did the orthopaedic doctor say? Had any bloodwork done, ANA, dsDNA etc. antibodies in particular?

I wonder why noen's bad advice is downvoted, while a random stab of "might be autoimmune" isn't.

I've been to doctors for the major joint problems, but they've said various contradictory things that have never helped. They've told me that it's aging. When I had my knee scoped the orthopedic surgeon told me that I "have naturally soft cartilage" . I don't think highly of that diagnosis.

In my experience, modern medicine is not that good with things unfamiliar to it.

I have been to doctors many times, but I don't believe that they've given me information that's useful.

Hi LW. I think that this community's insight could help me with my problem. I may have an undiagnosed medical condition, and I wanted to present it here in order to get some ideas, either on what it is, or what I should try to do to figure it out.

I'm a relatively active and relatively healthy-eating 36 yo male, but over the last 5.5 years I've had a bunch of musculo-skeletal problems (joints, tendons, muscles) each lasting a long time. Each of these by themselves would not be that unusual, but most have not resolved, and they are just so widespread:

- neck (6 mo., helped by stretching upper back , but still a problem: can't swim)

- l elbow (3yr. minor pain and weakness)

Some (maybe all) of these feel like they could be due to muscles getting so tight or short that they overtax the connected tendons/bones/cartilage.

The knees are the worst right now, though the hips were just as bad. I'm not sure what made the hips get better, possibly strengthening hip abductors.

Additionally, approximately at the time this started, I became lactose intolerant, but am currently okay. I also started getting springtime allergies for the first time 5.5 yrs ago.

I started a gluten-free diet a couple of weeks ago, and have also stopped all exercise for the last 3 weeks, but no effect so far. Because I've been active and athletic for so long, the physical problems are a major impact on my life and have a huge negative impact on my mood. I've never felt worse in my life, honestly.

I'm presenting this here because I know the reponses I get will be well thought out.

without human-style discretization you can't meaningfully say it was five rocks there

I find myself able to agree with this in the case of rocks, but not in the case of apples. An apple doesn't require the eye of the beholder. There's no danger that a different observer, at a different scale, would claim that there are really two apples if you look close enough.